This debate about regulations is alway interesting. There are regulations which help protect the environment, like not being allowed to dump dangerous chemicals into your local stream or river.
Then there are regulations like these which are aimed at protecting the investment companies have made into infrastructure, effectively granting them a monopoly.
When people debate this, they often are thinking of the first class of protective regulations that are too onerous on companies, but I think most people like clean drinking water and rivers that no longer catch fire.
Whereas the second class of protection is really harmful to the consumer, and the powers-that-be have effectively been given a monopoly, and with that the money and power to protect their place in the market through continued influence on elections and other things to maintain these rent seeking businesses. We all hate the latter, but these companies have a lot of sway over politicians.
And from the article, the telecom industry receives billions in corporate welfare. A common argument against cutting it off is that telecom is capital intensive infrastructure, and if you cut their govbux you're blocking poor people from being able to communicate, we all deserve the right to communicate. But if that's your take, how can you also hate the protectionist laws? Telecom are given a monopoly because it doesn't make sense to, say, have N sets of telephone poles or power lines from each provider.
In some countries there is sometimes a cable & data connection owner and then a separate service provider. Laws regulate that the cable provider must let other companies provide connections to customers over their cables. The service provider pays the cable owner for a bulk of data that its customers use. The cable owner can't charge more than it charges itself when it acts as a service provider.
Not sure if that made sense! I pay company B but my fibre connection is provided by Company A. If I want to change to Company C I start a contract with C and the only thing I change is the cable modem.
Yes, the FCC has authority over fiber and cable. Skim the amended Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S. Code § 151 - Purposes of chapter; Federal Communications Commission created [1]):
> For the purpose of regulating interstate and foreign commerce in communication by wire and radio so as to make available, so far as possible, to all the people of the United States, without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex, a rapid, efficient, Nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio communication service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges...
The FCC and FTC have a huge say on this. See the scandal with bulk-loaded, astroturfed public comments on broadband under the former Trump-appointed FCC chair.
The FCC determines what broadband is, and which companies get federal government subsidies for it. Federal subsidies > state subsidies.
